Business, family-style

Everybody's heard bosses say they treat their employees “like family.” But for financial planner Mark Delp, that's not just a cliché, it's a business practice.

He learned it the hard way.

The lesson began Aug. 30, 1999. Delp had a good job working for a company, and he and wife, Dina, were getting ready to move into a new home in Orange. But that day, their son Alex was born four months premature. The baby would need to spend three months in the hospital before his parents could bring him home. When they finally brought him home, it didn't take them long to see something was different about him.

“He needed a lot,” Dina says of the first few years of Alex's life. “He basically had no immune system. He couldn't really be around other children because a cold for him could be terminal.”

The first two years of Alex's life was a demanding time for the couple. One night in March 2001, it all came to a head.

“That night he was just crying and not sleeping at all, all night,” Mark Delp said. “He finally went down at 5 a.m. I woke up at 7 a.m. and called the office.”

He was expected at work in a half-hour, but he was exhausted from caring for his baby. “I said to my boss, ‘I had bad night, I won't be there in the morning.' All he said was, ‘Don't bother coming in.' And that was it – late one day because I was taking care of my son, and I'm fired.”

As if that weren't enough, April rolled around: Dina's father was diagnosed with cancer and by June was dead. Two months after that, Alex was officially diagnosed with autism.

While Mark Delp had secured a job by then working with AG Edward & Sons, in October the couple were hit with more bad news: Dina was laid off for taking too many days off to take care of Alex.

“It's easy to say 2001 was the worst year of our lives,” says Mark Delp, now president of Institutional Wealth Consultants, which he launched in 2009. “That's what made me who I am. It's why I treat my employees the way I do.”

“He really is unlike any other boss out there,” says Jessica Moon, a 32 year-old mother of two. “He treats us with respect and treats his business like family. He's one in a million.”

While Delp was starting his company, the recession hit – and hit hard. At the time, Delp had five employees, and although they weren't doing anything differently, sales fell and continued to fall.

So what did he do to keep his business afloat? Dip into his personal savings, of course.

“My wife went back to work, and we kept things the way they were at the office,” he says. “I didn't want my employees to feel anything. I didn't cut their pay or hours; they didn't do anything wrong. The recession just … hit.”

Delp treats his employees the way he wants to be treated. Want to leave early to go to your daughter's recital? Have at it. Up late because your son has the stomach flu and you can't be in until noon? No problem. Need to take your dad to the doctor? That's perfectly fine.

His motto is simple: Either you are at work, or your results are. Get your work done and get on with your life.

“I want my employees to have family time,” he says of his one full-time and five part-time employees. “I want them to go home and be happy with a positive attitude and a positive family life. It makes things better at work and makes for a good work balance.”

This year, Delp will be taking six weeks of vacation. So how many weeks off does Moon, his one full-time employee, get? Six.

“Why should I take more time off when she's here just as much?” Delp says. “She works just as hard as I do, does as much work as I do, so it's only fair that she gets as much time off as I do.”

All of his employees are eligible for health insurance and full benefits, regardless of how many hours per week are worked.

“I am very loyal to them and they are loyal to me in return,” Delp says. “I treat my employees like good people, because they are. It leads to better service and great results.”

In his office, you won't see his degree from USC on the wall, but pictures of Dina and their children Alex, 13, and Analise, 6. The ups and downs he went through with his family in 2001 taught him two things: the type of employer he plans to be and the type of life he wants to lead.

“It showed us that at the end of the day that is what's left,” Dina says. “At the end of the day … it's family. That changed the way he approaches business. That's his bottom line, the understanding that there are bigger things in life than work.”

“I genuinely enjoy coming to work,” says Moon with an ear-to-ear smile. “He's just a nice guy, great employer and has a great heart. I really doubt there is anyone else out there like him.”

But more than just a good example of the golden rule, Mark Delp's strategy turns out to be golden in another way: Business, as they say, is booming.